Fear No Evil
by C.A. Elenath
Summary: Bridge awakens one night to a dark and menacing new presence in his room...
1. Darkness

**Disclaimer**: _Not for profit, just evil glee._

**Notes**: _This is most probably a one-shot story. It was just a neat scene that ran through my head one night, but no plot arc has formed around it. A warning to my readers not to hold their breath ) But enjoy nevertheless, and let me know what you think by reviewing! Thanks )_

**Darkness**

It was dark…well, of course it was dark. It was four in the morning. But the lack-of-light darkness wasn't the first that Bridge noticed as he stirred awake; it was the psychic darkness that pressed in on him from all sides. He thought it was a lingering trace of the incoherent but distressing dreams he'd been having, that it would lift soon after he escaped those dreams. But no, the darkness stayed, crystal clear in the waking world.

Well, crystal clear in the sense that it never lost its intensity. If anything, its presence in the waking world was even more stifling than its presence in his dreams, and there, it had been pretty bad. The darkness was no sharp, finite psychic impression that he could name, not like affection, or anger, confusion or contentment. Those impressions were distinct and easy to identify.

What he felt now was murky, heavy, deeply unsettling, and pervaded everything with seemingly no source he could pinpoint. This darkness was new to him—it was unlike anything he had ever perceived before, and he had had his psychic powers for a long time now. Something that could give off such raw negative energy had to be a really bad thing, certainly something that shouldn't be hanging around in his dorm room.

With a shiver, Bridge sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes with a bare hand. His bed was one of the only places he could get away with not wearing his gloves, the other two being the shower and his lab. He wouldn't be hit with the intense psychic impressions that skin-to-surface contact usually caused as long as everything he touched belonged to him.

This was bad. The more alert he became, the more strongly he felt the strange darkness. He considered the wisdom of scanning it more deeply—that might enable him to get a better handle on it, but it would also intensify the impression tenfold in the process. As things stood, his body was tense and the knot of dread in his stomach was growing larger by the minute. Multiply it tenfold and he might be frozen in utter terror.

Fear. Yeah, that ship was definitely beginning to sail his way. He was afraid to probe the darkness with his psychic senses, afraid of what he would discover; afraid of what he'd be hit with. As he struggled to contain the rising surge of negative emotions, the darkness around him shifted, like a cloud of poisonous ink in water. For all its murky and indistinct nature, the impression of it was finally coalescing into a single, coherent word in his mind. He finally had a name for what he was perceiving, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

Evil.

Bridge quickly stuck his unprotected hand back under the covers, his fingers numb with a cold that had nothing to do with temperature. There was evil in his room. It hung in the air, it crawled across the walls, it leeched the oxygen from his very lungs as it gleefully raked its hand across his psychic senses.

His breaths were coming shorter and faster now, and he quickly glanced at his gloves which sat on the desktop beside his bed. The darkness hung heavy around them too, and for once, he didn't think they would help. A sort of reckless courage shot through his rising fear, and he brought his hand back out from under the covers, waving it through the air in front of him.

_Wham!_ Bridge fell back against the wall with a startled gasp. It felt like an icy dagger had been stabbed into his brain, leaving behind a mind-numbing panic that he barely managed to contain. Images from his dreams, no more distinct than the slides of an inkblot test, were clamoring before his mental eye, threatening to hold him frozen in blind terror.

He ran his hand through his haphazard brown hair, and cast about with his other five, normal senses for something to steal his focus away from the darkness. Sometimes he got so lost in psychic impressions, it became easy to forget that there were five other ways to perceive the world. That was one of the little tricks he'd learned to protect himself from mental overload.

His ears were the first to pick up something—the soft, nearly inaudible rhythm of exhaling and inhaling…Bridge blinked. He'd actually forgotten he wasn't alone in the room. That was a bad sign. He usually rambled because he remembered too much; it ware rare that his mind ever left anything out.

Bridge didn't know when Sky had come back to the room, but it definitely hadn't been before the traditional lights-out hour. Very unlike his by-the-book roommate. He'd assumed the Blue Ranger was off brooding somewhere, as their latest missions had been unsettling, to say the least. But even if Sky had come back late, and was deadbeat tired, he was a light sleeper. The noise of Bridge's back hitting the wall should have at least made him stir, if not awaken completely.

It was dark enough in the room that Bridge couldn't actually see his roommate. Staring across the room was like looking into a black hole, and his psychic eye, which saw light and dark in a very different manner, saw that the darkness was heaviest in Sky's half of the room.

That worried Bridge deeply. With his attention refocused on the intangible evil present, his stomach threatened to knot up in dread again. He hesitated a moment, then waved a hand tentatively at his roommate.

Another icy stab in the brain made him wince. Both his hands were cold now, despite the fact that one was still buried deep beneath the warm covers. His skin was prickling and he suddenly felt a mental lash that was almost like a physical shove.

Bridge's eyes widened as he realized where the darkness was coming from. But how? When? Why? This wasn't good, this wasn't good at all. Of course it wasn't, this…it…he….evil, in the room! Nothing he'd ever sensed from the monsters they fought had felt as dark as this.

Danger. That was the solitary word in his mind, and Bridge knew he had to get out of there. The darkness was intangible, but that didn't make it harmless. As a psychic, Bridge knew that all too well.

He reached over and snatched up his gloves, pulling them on hurriedly as he surged out of bed. He stumbled slightly, the lack of light in the room compromising his balance. His uniform jacket was the nearest long sleeve garment at hand, so he snatched that up too. He tugged it on while heading for the door. The mere five steps it took to get there seemed to waste such precious time. He reached for the unlock button.

"Where are you going?"

He never heard Sky move, not a single rustle or footstep. In fact, Sky _didn't_ move, Bridge was sure. He was just suddenly _there_ by the door, leaning casually on one elbow against the doorframe. Looking down at Bridge intently.

Bridge froze. With the evil this close to him, he couldn't breathe, literally.

"Get…some water," he said breathlessly, his hand reaching for the unlock button again. It didn't work.

"I don't think so."

The panic began to rise.

Sky shifted—not moved; he did not traverse even the smallest of physical space—in a way reminiscent of the hazy, squirming quality of distant heat waves, and suddenly Bridge was blind. He was enveloped in the darkness, wrapping around tight and smothering him, crawling thick and icy across his skin.

And then Bridge realized it wasn't psychic energy creating that cold sensation. It was Sky's hands, slowly wrapping around his neck.


	2. Withdraw

**Disclaimer**: _Not for profit, just evil glee. Also, this particular chapter was based on a bit of fic a friend wrote while we were plotting together, with some lines directly filched off her piece. Thank you, N.E. Shaw! Make sure you check out some of her stories too )_

**Author's Note**: _Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed! I so very much appreciate comments from my readers ) Obviously the one-shotness didn't come true, not that I have a much better idea of where this is going. I'll just have to be inspired along the way. _

**Withdraw**

It was dark. There was no light and no sound in the room save for the periodic blink and bleep of the various monitors clustered around the bed. Starched white curtains hung stiffly all around, further isolating this small corner of the infirmary from the rest of the world, even though the room it resided in was void of other occupants. Dr. Manx called such treatments 'sensory deprivation'—ideal conditions for a patient in psychic shock.

Z didn't see how such conditions were ideal for _anyone_ when the goal was to try to bring them back to consciousness. Who would want to return to such a dark and foreboding atmosphere? Also, she knew that stimulation was a way of life for their meandering-minded Green Ranger. Most would have assumed that any additional stimuli would only contribute to the chaos of psychic impressions in his mind, but it was just the opposite that was true. Stimulation perceived through his five normal senses actually helped to distract him from the barrage of information his sixth, psychic sense picked up.

She reached for the dimmer above the headboard and turned it slightly, throwing a weak, pale yellow patch of light over the bed. Her expression immediately tightened, the corners of her mouth turning down. Bridge's face was a frighteningly ill shade of gray, and he lay so still that at first, only the heart and respiratory monitors could assure her he was still alive.

"Hey," Z whispered, a little hoarsely in her effort to keep her voice low. She cleared her throat and tried again.

"It's Z. No one told me specifically I couldn't come visit you, though they certainly weren't encouraging it either. We've been scouring your room and security footage for any evidence of an intruder, but we can't find any. Cruger thinks it was an inside job—every staff member and cadet in the Academy is being cross-checked and scrutinized."

Z tugged a nearby chair closer to the bed and sank into it. "I think only you can tell us who did this to you. Every avenue we've tried has come up blank. We need you to tell us, Bridge. We need you to wake up. We need you back."

She didn't realize she'd taken Bridge's hand in her own, and felt the worn leather of his glove soft and warm beneath her fingers. She lifted her other hand and stroked the back of his glove with her thumb. She couldn't imagine lying here in this state for so long, in this quiet and eerie corner of a room. The Bridge she knew, the one full of babble and charm, would have gone mad with loneliness or boredom or both. Where was he now, somewhere inside this silenced shell of his former self?

Z's eyes traveled from his hand back up to his placid face. Maybe the stale lighting was partially to blame for his sickly coloring; it was almost directly above his head, illuminating his face while leaving the valley of his throat shadowed beneath his chin.

Z frowned. When she leaned in closer, she could see darker spots adorning both sides of his throat, somewhat symmetrically, ones that didn't move with the light.

Her eyes widened in horror. The spots weren't shadows; they were bruises, just the right shape and size to have been formed by someone's hands. Near his Adam's apple there were two particularly dark spots, probably where someone's thumbs had pressed down on his windpipe. Someone had tried to strangle him to death.

"Oh, Bridge," Z squeezed his hand, the hard light of anger starting to flare in her eyes. Neither Cruger or Dr. Manx had mentioned _that _little detail.

"We'll find who did this to you," she promised the Green Ranger. "They're not going to get away with this."

Her grip on Bridge's hand didn't ease, and she realized she was half hoping for a returning squeeze, even the weakest twitch. But there was nothing. Bridge was silent and still as ever, lost in some darkness she couldn't reach.

…Or could she? What would happen, she wondered, if she took off his glove and his skin touched hers? Would that intense psychic channel open between them while he was unconscious? The Green Ranger normally avoided direct physical contact because that unleashed everything in a person's mind into his own, in one huge involuntarily stream of information overkill.

But perhaps this one time, that was just the jolt and lifeline Bridge needed to return to the waking world. Maybe he needed someone to guide him back.

Feeling both uneasy and hopeful, Z cast a cautious glance around before tearing at the Velcro on his glove. The crisp rip of the little hooks and loops pulling apart seemed so impossibly loud that for a moment she worried half the infirmary staff would come running in.

No one did. She peeled back the glove and set it on the bed just beside his hand. Then, she took a deep breath and gently laid her fingers over his.

The world immediately went black.

**x-x-x-x-x**

She was fully aware, alert and unhindered mentally, but she couldn't feel her body. When she tentatively tried to reach out into the darkness, she only felt an impression of herself moving forward. The same happened when she called out Bridge's name. She only felt an impression of her voice projecting outward—she didn't actually hear it.

She was in a mental realm, a place of non-physicality, and she only knew that because of the few explanations the Green Ranger had given her to try to explain what his powers were like. Did this mean she'd been successful? That she'd made the connection she was hoping to make? Was Bridge somewhere here?

She 'called' his name again and waited. After a moment, there was a faint impression of a green glow from a nameless direction, and she 'turned' to it. It was warm and familiar, and for an ephemeral moment, she rejoiced. Then the glow began to dim, leeched into and drowned out by the darkness.

_No!_ She tried to 'run' to it, but without any true direction in this place, she could very well have been running further from it. She was starting to feel lost and disorientated, and cold even though temperature nor her physical body existed here. The darkness shifted around her and constricted, feeling as heavy and impenetrable as the tarp covering of a pool when one is under it and desperate for air.

"_Bridge!"_

Confusion slammed into her, and Fear and Panic and Anguish and Tension. The emotions weren't hers, but for a moment they were, and they made her slip. She was drowning, being tossed and thrashed by an invisible black wave, helpless as a rag doll. She was sure she would lose herself to that darkness when she heard a voice over the silent roar. Bridge's voice.

"_Withdraw_!" he said. She had to focus hard to hear him.

"_What?_"

"_Withdraw!_" This time, the word was accompanied by a harsh shove. "_Get out of here, Z!"_

"_Not without you!"_ she responded, and felt herself sinking again.

"_Come back for me!" _he returned. "_You can't help me now, not while he's free!"_

"_Not while who's free?"_

Bridge gave her another forceful shove, and she was suddenly falling upward, slipping free of the inky darkness. She felt light and unrestricted again, but she knew without a doubt those black tentacles were pulling at Bridge instead, dragging him back down and deeper into that suffocating sea. She wanted to reach out for him, but she didn't dare.

"_Bridge!"_


	3. Uneasy

**Disclaimer**_: Not for profit, just evil gleeee! _

**Author's Note**_: Again, thanks to everyone who read and reviewed! It really makes my day :)_

**Uneasy**

It was like sharing a room with a python.

He had had his own quarters since he picked up the Red morpher, by virtue of rank and the innocent fact that the Ranger team had an odd number of people. That had ended three nights ago, when after the attack on Bridge, Sky began rooming with him at the commander's orders. Cruger didn't want to have Sky occupying what was essentially a crime scene, nor did he want to further risk the safety of the remaining Rangers by having them bunk alone.

Did that really matter though? It wasn't like Bridge had been rooming on his own when some unknown assailant snuck in and nearly killed him, leaving no identifying evidence behind. He or she was quite possibly still inside the Academy. The Rangers hardly gave half a thought to their own safety, though. They were too angry over Bridge's condition, and were determined to catch whoever had hurt him.

Jack glanced over at his temporary roommate, who currently had his nose buried inside the SPD handbook beneath the light of a desk lamp. The uptight Blue Ranger was undoubtedly the source of most contention for him on the team, and sharing a room with him was turning out to be like sharing a room with a wild animal—easy to provoke and hard to ignore.

At least, it _felt_ that way. In reality, Sky hadn't actually _done_ anything. Lately he'd been unusually quiet, never once picking a quarrel or shoving another miscellaneous regulation down Jack's throat. It was strange to have that side of the Blue Ranger missing; it probably would have lessened the feeling that he was going to pounce on Jack for the first wrong word, and it most certainly would have eased the tension that thickened the air in their room, slowly and surely towards the breaking point.

Yeah, it would be nice to have his room to himself again, but he had to try to hold on to patience. The attack on Bridge was probably what caused this change, affecting Sky more deeply than it affected him. Sky had known Bridge longer, after all, and the two seemed to be closer friends than they let on. Worst of all, Sky had been the one to find Bridge, unconscious and unresponsive, on their dorm room floor. The Blue Ranger had stepped out for his usual early morning run just an hour before.

He hadn't gone on his run since.

Jack had to wonder sometimes what might have happened if Sky had been in the room at the time of the attack. The outcome might have been brighter. Then again, the team might have been down two Rangers instead of one. That stark reality, more than his sympathy, was what made Jack tolerate having his room invaded. They certainly didn't need to lose another Ranger now.

He rolled over in bed, throwing a pillow onto his head as he tried to will himself to sleep. He was tired, it was dead silent in the room, and the small shaft of light from Sky's lamp wasn't a problem thanks to the pillow over his face. So why couldn't he sleep still?

Several minutes passed, each more frustrating than the last, until he finally concluded that it was his own unending swirl of thoughts that were keeping him awake. Every concern and every problem that the team was facing seemed to topple and collide in his mind tonight, all at the same time.

The Rangers were now short one member. Battles were tougher as a result. Bridge was facing an uncertain recovery. The mysterious attacker hadn't been identified yet, let alone caught. Everyone was edgy and extremely short with one another.

This unease he felt had actually begun three nights ago, not unexpectedly, but since then it just kept growing instead of diminishing, until tonight when it loomed so large, Jack worried he might never sleep again. Suddenly he wished the air in the room wasn't so still. He wanted a distraction from his own thoughts.

He lifted the pillow from his face and glanced at Sky again, who was still hidden behind his manual. Dead silent. Jack realized he hadn't seen or heard the Blue Ranger turn a page all night.

"Sky?"

The book was slowly lowered, and the Blue Ranger peered at him from over the top questioningly.

Jack felt something inside him squirm.

"You all right?"

Sky looked a little perplexed, a little annoyed, and a little derisive. "I'm fine. Why?"

"You haven't turned a page in that thing for two hours."

The green-grey gaze seemed a bit icy. "Why were you watching me?"

"I wasn't." Jack half-expected to hear a rattle or a hiss cut through the air, the way they did in the movies. He was used to receiving some level of hostility from the Blue Ranger on most occasions, but tonight…he couldn't explain it, but there was just something _off_ about his teammate. "Never mind."

Sky's face disappeared from view for a moment as he meticulously closed the manual and placed it on the tabletop beside the bed. Then he reached up and shut off the desk lamp, throwing the room into near darkness. Only the glow of city lights filtering in through the window kept the room dimly lit.

A strange sensation swept over Jack, something akin to vertigo, but not quite as disorientating. He rose from his bed abruptly.

"Where are you going?" he heard Sky ask. He didn't know why, but the question deeply unsettled him.

"I'm gonna go get a snack," Jack replied, punching the unlock button beside the door. "Can't sleep."

"'Kay."

Was it just his imagination, or did the door take a second longer than usual to open? He had half a mind to hit the unlock button again when the door slid aside with a quiet hydraulic hiss. He stepped out into the cadet lounge, which was lit at the same dim level as his room, but it was a much wider space, full of shadows and rendered nearly colorless in the dark.

The food replicator, glowing a muted blue in the corner, was a comforting sight, and this time not because it held the promise of edible treats. Jack started to head towards it, chiding himself in his mind that he was too old to be afraid of the dark. He hadn't been afraid of it as a child; why would he start now?

He took another step towards the corner, and paused. Something was wrong. He had _been_ knowing that, but he couldn't figure out what it was, or what to do about it. He surreptitiously glanced back over his shoulder, uncertain of why he expected something different to be looking out at him from the room he'd left just two seconds before.

The door was already shut.


	4. Dream

**Disclaimer: **_Not for profit, just evil gleeee!_

**Author's Note: **_See author's profile for extended note on this story. _

- -

**Dream**

He dreamed of a forest, one where the treetops sprouted pink as much as dark green, and the air was tinged violet by an eerie kind of daylight. The brush beneath his feet made no sound, nor did the branches he had to push aside to get by. The only noise to be heard was a faint moaning wind, which sounded too much like a human voice for his liking.

He walked cautiously, in a nameless direction and acutely aware that the red trim on his uniform was the most vibrant color in this hazy place. The color of a target. He wasn't sure what this place was, or what he was doing here, but if that was true, then why wasn't he surprised to find himself here?

He walked until the endless parade of identical trees ceased without warning or reason, and he found himself in a wide clearing coated with thick blue grass. The sky overhead was now visible, and he realized with a start that it was a clear sea green. It was like the world had been turned on its head.

In the center of that clearing stood a red robed figure, rich scarlet folds pooling around its feet like blood puddles in the grass. The color was deep, much darker than the trim on his uniform, and the fabric was full of shadows. The stranger's face was turned away, away from him and away from the light. He or she stood completely still.

Such menace emanated from this figure, entirely evocative of the Grim Reaper. It kept him hovering on the edge where clearing and trees met, unwilling to go farther into the open. Eventually he backed away, intent on sneaking off because nothing significant was happening. He turned…

And there was the figure looming behind him, the black hole of a shadow beneath its hood mere inches from his face. He leaped back with a startled yelp, heart hammering away in his chest like it wanted to escape. The figure said and did nothing, but a faint hissing rattle cut through the air. He had to wait until his voice was steady again to speak.

"Why am I here?"

He had not intended to say that. He had meant to ask 'who are you' but somehow different words slipped from his mouth. Before him, the red fabric stirred in a wind he could not feel, and in such a way that he got the impression the face beneath it was grinning at him. A smile like that, sinister enough to be felt when it could not be seen, did not bode well. His hand automatically reached to his right side, but his blaster was not there. Neither was his morpher. He had nothing.

The figure lifted its hands, encased in rough brown leather gauntlets, and he took a step back, falling into a defensive stance. He watched the fingers hook with deliberate slowness onto the edges of the hood and ease it back. Every inch it slid raised another hair on the back of his neck.

_Dear God...though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..._

A blackened face that rejected all light appeared. It was savage, grotesquely mutilated. It might have been human—it might have been _alive_ once, but now it was life in ruins. It was not life. It was scars and destruction. It was decomposition and death. The lipless mouth seemed to say with its grin, '_I've got you.'_

_I will fear no evil._

But he was afraid. He was frozen, his heart pumping ice water. The figure declined its head minutely, and he glanced downward in a panic. There was nothing—a trick. His gaze snapped back up; he couldn't help himself. This was the enthrallment held by all things terrible. But it was a mistake. As soon as his eyes lifted, something icy stabbed him in the chest, so cold it burned like flame, and so roughly it stole his breath. He stiffened, his body going rigid, air unable to pass through. This wasn't the end. It wasn't...

He glanced down. A silver blade was at his heart, edge wet with his life. A brown leather hand held the handle in a movement he never saw.

_Art thou with me?_

He fell, silently, though he wanted to fight. In this place, his existence wasn't worth a cry. He had been brought here and he had asked the right question. He had been brought here to die.


End file.
